qwerty

mardi, mai 31, 2005

The cockerel keeps singing

I am surrounded by losers, ie French people, anxious to return to a notional moment in history when France wasn't in the shit, convinced that high unemployment and a lousy economy is all the fault of a bizarre combination of English breakfasts and Turkish coffee and Macdonalds' total disregard for the Droits de l'Homme (leading to a country full of the sort of people who set up Amazon and the like in their garages without once thinking about the right of its employees to a job for life and no need to do it properly, or even turn up for work if that's what their Union tells them). It's completely true as far as I can see that the 55% who voted NON really think it's unfair that a country that has such shitty food should be doing so much better than a country which invented the croissant. And they're damned, absolutely damned, if they're going to follow suit - rather munch a baguette on a sinking ship than swim to dry land if that land is peopled by English speakers eating chips with malt vinegar. We know quite a lot of the lefty type of No voters, who somehow can't join the dots.

What is so amusing about this referendum, at least from my corner of the living room, is that the majority of the No voters are exactly the ones who are going to be the most fucked over when as a result of Chirac losing the referendum Sarkozy gets elected president and does a Thatcher on them (assuming he wins the next election, which in the absence of a coherent left-wing opposition currently looks inevitable, unless Le Pen gets in). Ha bloody ha. And as for de Villepin - well it was inevitable, though ultimately presumably another nail in the coffin for Chirac. I have been feeling terribly depressed since Sunday night. The Guardian seems to have it completely right - the constitution is just collateral damage, the real issue here is France and what a total mess it's in. Forward, backwards, sideways, anyone?